It's the same story every year. Team meets player. Player plays pretty good. Player leaves team. It's happened before and a strong certainty suggests that along with taxes and death, it's bound to happen again. Yet the question isn't so much about what the Bengals could have done to keep Johnathan Joseph. Once he left for the Houston Texans, that chapter was over and the Bengals reflected. The question became, what would they do about it?

To say that they did nothing would be unfair.

The Bengals went out and signed cornerback Nate Clements to a two-year deal and traded for Kelly Jennings. Adam Jones is currently on Reserve/PUP and hopefully returns when he's allowed to by midseason.

Saying that Clements and Jennings are improvements over what the team had last year would be a stretch. But when the team was forced to react to Joseph's departure -- a scenario that the team reportedly didn't see coming -- they did.

Starters: Leon Hall and Nate Clements
Backups: Kelly Jennings and Morgan Trent